Walmart-Backed Engagement? Catalyst Chicago has reported that Chicago's community hearings on school closures are being underwritten by the Walton Foundation. Catalyst notes that Chicago Public Schools officials have said they "don't want to link the volatile issue of school closings with the equally volatile issue of charter school openings," but Walton is a major backer of charter schools. Media isn't allowed to attend these community sessions. "This grant is allowing us to initiate what is probably the most inclusive and rigorous outreach to parents CPS has done to include their voice at the front end of this process," a CPS spokesperson told Catalyst.

Who Is The Biggest (Educational) Loser? As we reported yesterday, Education Week released its Quality Counts report, one of the most comprehensive education rankings in the United States. For the fifth year in a row, Maryland came out on top. Who can in last? South Dakota. Things like rankings can be a bit trickier than they appear -- for example, some of the differences between states might not be statistically significant. But they are incredibly useful, at least politically.

Acknowledging the real root of the problem -- state school monopolies -- seems like an attack on government. But it is not an attack to observe that government is bad at running schools, anymore than it's an attack on shovels to note that they make lousy Web browsers.

A major battle over free speech is being waged at Seattle Community College District, where the Board of Trustees wants to revise the Washington Administrative Code to allow new rules that would regulate protests on all three of the city's state funded community college campuses.

The real cost of producing college and career ready graduates depends on the student population and the risk factors they bring to school. We need to align state funding systems with our academic goals and create incentives for the services we want to see.

There are the same key players in every city and they arrange and rearrange themselves like pawns on a chess board but they are always the same individuals and highly profitable "nonprofits" in each town.